The Town
The hotel and civic buildings on Kazanlak's main square - pl. Sevtopolis - present an uncompromisingly modern contrast to the remnants of the prewar town that straggle untidily westwards. The nineteenth-century Church of the Assumption , just off the square to the east, contains an exquisite iconostasis carved by Debar craftsmen, while a host of finds from ancient Seuthopolis are displayed in the basement of the Iskra Museum , to the north of the square (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 2-5.30pm; 2Lv/US$1). Diagrams of the city's street plan show it to have been an ambitious undertaking, built from scratch on a grid pattern based on the theories of Hippodamus of Miletus, the doyen of Hellenistic town planners. Weapons, pottery, and coins minted by Seuthes III help to illustrate life in his capital, while the reconstructed floor plans of domestic houses reveal the bowl-like depressions that served as cult hearths, for appeals to tribal deities. Upstairs is a gallery exhibiting mediocre modern works and a collection of icons from local churches. Ten minutes' walk northeast of the museum, on the far bank of the Starata Reka, ul. Knyaz Mirski runs off beside an Ethnographic Complex . Along here, several nineteenth-century houses have been restored to their former splendour, one of which serves as a museum (summer Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, for winter hours enquire at the Iskra Museum; US$1), where period furnishings and an elegant walled garden recall the lifestyles of Kazanlak's rose merchants. If the rose industry fires your imagination, you might want to trek out to the Museum of the Rose Industry (summer daily 8.30am-5-30pm; for winter hours, enquire at the Iskra Museum), 2km from the centre along the Shipka road - buses #5 or #6 pass by. Though there's relatively little information given in English, the museum successfully conveys an idea of how rose jam, toothpaste, eau-de-cologne, jelly and, of course, attar of roses are produced.
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